Liberals call Bush a hero now that there’s a new Republican Hitler in town.

George W. Bush
gave Democrats a gift this week—which should be a reminder of the perils of demonizing political opponents. But don’t bank on the left accepting his gracious offering.

Promoting his new book about veterans on NBC’s “Today” show, Mr. Bush was asked to weigh in on the fight between
Donald Trump
and the media. “We need an independent media to hold people like me to account,” he told
Matt Lauer.
“Power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive, and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power.”

The press and liberal groups gushed, and hundreds of headlines approvingly quoted the former president. “Why you should listen when George W. Bush defends the media,” declared a headline at the Washington Post. “George W Bush: a welcome return,” raved the Guardian, which went so far as to call him a “paragon of virtue.” The leftist site ThinkProgress ran a blog post titled “George W. Bush defends the Constitution to rebuke Trump.”

Miss me yet?

Suddenly, they do—though only in the most self-serving way. President Bush would have made the exact same defense of the First Amendment while he was in office (and indeed, he later explicitly said that his words were not meant as a criticism of Mr. Trump).

Mr. Bush is a straight-up guy. While president, he treated the press and his political opponents with general courtesy—attending their events, living with their bias. He ran as a uniter and was far more genuine in his outreach than his grandiose successor. He didn’t lie, or bully, or sic his IRS on his opponents, or spy on reporters. He took responsibility for his actions, notably big decisions like going to war.

Not one bit of that earned him any credit. Go back and read the headlines from the Bush administration. They vary in substance from today’s coverage, but not the least in tone. Bush Derangement Syndrome entailed a vicious, daily assault by a media contemptuous of Mr. Bush’s intelligence, intentions and integrity. He was compared to
Hitler
and terrorists, accused of racism, homophobia and sexism. He was a plutocrat, out to rip off the nation’s old and poor. He orchestrated conspiracies ranging from 9/11 to the spread of avian flu. He lied, people died.

None of this was true, but the goal of the media and the left from the start of the Bush presidency was to demonize and delegitimize the man and his agenda. It worked to a degree, in that it helped put the White House into the hands of
Barack Obama
—who, in contrast to Mr. Bush, used the power of his office to continue vilifying his opponents. Mr. Trump’s smash-mouth politics are simply a continuation of this trend.

Which brings us to the president’s Tuesday address to Congress, and the shocked faces of all those women in white. Democrats were counting on Mr. Trump to unleash another gloomy tirade, the easier to continue demonizing him. Instead a gracious Mr. Trump called for unity, offered to work with the other side, and dangled some liberal priorities in front of Democratic noses—infrastructure spending, immigration reform.
Nancy Pelosi
looked verklempt.

Democrats have been so eager to paint Mr. Trump as a right-wing lunatic that they’ve actually started to believe it—at their peril. The reality is that Mr. Trump is one of the least ideological Republican leaders in modern history. He wasn’t even a member of the GOP until recently. And while he clearly intends to uphold his campaign promises, he’s a negotiator who is always up for a deal. This is a man the Democratic Party can work with, if it chooses.

The Democratic temptation will be to continue to resist and obstruct. The party will tell itself that this strategy worked against Mr. Bush, that it worked for the Tea Party against Mr. Obama, that Mr. Trump will surely grow more unpopular.

Then again, the Trump phenomenon is rooted in voters’ growing disgust with politics as usual. Although Mr. Trump’s personal approval ratings are far from stellar, the latest poll from this newspaper and NBC shows that voters appreciate the president’s directness, his decisiveness, and his intention to get things done. The poll also shows a growing sense of optimism and a sharp turn against the Democrats. Obstruction would be taking a big chance in these times.

In the end, Democrats have to decide why they are in Washington: to follow through on some promises to voters, or to play politics? Their widespread and instantaneous dismissal of Mr. Trump’s outreach on immigration suggests the latter. “The speech he gave,” complained Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, “was one of the most anti-immigrant speeches that we heard any president ever give.”

But we are no longer living in the Bush days. Derangement syndrome holds a much bigger risk for today’s idea-free Democratic Party than it did 12 years ago.